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Stanhope And Schroders Win Croydon Battle

Published on 12-09-2008 by
Skyscrapernews.com

The long running legal battle over who should be allowed to build what on the Croydon Gateway site has finally drawn to a close with the local council having dumped their favoured developer, Arrowcroft.

Two rival consortiums, one of Stanhope and Schroders and the other of Arrowcroft and Croydon Council both wanted to develop the site according to their own ideas.

Although both wanted to develop the site with a mixture of tall buildings offering large amounts of residential, office, hotel and retail space Arrowcroft and Croydon Council had one major difference from the Stanhope proposals in the form of an arena.

Stanhope and Schroders refused to include one in their plans claiming it was unviable whilst the council refused to let them go ahead with the project without one believing that they were wrong.

Each consortium owned part of the land with the council having tried to get a compulsory purchase order enforced on their opponents to claw the land back and enable the project to begin but legal impasse occurred with both parties trying to use the planning system to refuse permission for the other.

At one point the now defunct Office of the Deputy Prime Minister went as far as refusing planning permission for the Stanhope and Schroders plans making it look likely they would lose.

Times have changed though and the final straw for Arrowcroft and Croydon Council was when the Secretary of State, Hazel Blears, refused planning permission for their development six weeks ago.

If they wished to, they would have to appeal against her decision within these six weeks but no appeal was made and Croydon Council has now announced they will finally be working with Stanhope and Schroders removing the main obstacle the two of them faced.

If the current designs are built they will see a 135 metre tall office tower from the pens of Foster and Partner go up plus a group of other buildings including a 94 metre tall residential and hotel tower and a total of 148,000 square metres of new floor space across the whole masterplan.